Category Archives: Sulking

For the last few weeks, I felt like I was finally moving beyond Philly. People had stopped asking about my training, the Olympic Trials came and went and I survived and I had a few good weeks of training. Then yesterday happened. The rest of my classmates are full, official 4th years while I’m making up the rotations I missed while I was training this fall. I was doing 4th year electives while I was “off” but I have to make up those clerkships before graduation and I opted to do them right off the bat. As such, I’m now surrounded by 3rd years who don’t know me or my story and who assume that I failed the Boards or otherwise floundered in third year and have to repeat a clerkship. I guess I could let them assume that and maybe so doing would ultimately be less painful, but I have had to have the following conversation multiple times in the past day.

“You’re a 2017, right? Why are you in this rotation?”

“I took the fall off to train for the Olympic Trials.”

“Cool, did you make it?”

“No, that’s not really how the United States system works. I needed to qualify for a chance to compete but I didn’t make the standard.” Awkward silence….

I’m facing a similar issue with writing my personal statement. My advisor is the Program Director here and she has encouraged me to demonstrate that I’m both a team player and have the ability to persevere, which is best done in my case via my running career. How do I demonstrate that perseverance when I feel like I failed at my big, bold move? How do I articulate that although I didn’t reach my A through E goals, I did achieve a lot of amazing things? How do I get over my shame enough to represent myself well?

Like this:

I’m having a tough week and am really missing running. My sadness started yesterday when Brian gave me the workout forecast for the week which included a 10 minute run test on Thursday and nothing before that and what looks like now a very slow progression back to decent mileage.

What’s hard to take is last week he gave me the option to go for a 3 mile run to test out the PF and said that a lot of runners choose to run through the pain. Coach Jess and I decided to hold off on the run which I totally agree was the best decision, but now I’m faced with only 10 minutes this week and this after I was a goodie two shoes all weekend trying to stay off my feet and rehabbing the foot as much as possible.

10 minutes, let’s see I’ll probably not need to bring my fuel belt and although I don’t usually run with music, maybe I should for this one with the challenging being which 2-3 songs to I pick for this epic journey? Do I go with something slow and mellow to remind me to be patient and take things easy or do I go with something energetic to motivate myself of better days and longer runs to come? The ideal scenario would be to spend an hour or two finding that perfect mix but ignore the fact that my MP3 battery is almost dead cause I’ve not used it in weeks, then go for the 10er (10er not being short for 10 miler, but for 10 minutes) only to have the battery die in the middle of the first song. I’m rocking the pessimism today!

Should I consider carb-ing up Wednesday night for my big 10er? It should be pretty easy as given it’s 5% the distance or time of a decent LR. That would translate into a single pasta noodle or a half dozen grains of rice. And for my pre-race fuel instead of eating a banana, pb and honey maybe I’ll peel the banana like usual and only eat one of those long stringy things that come off which tastes like it’s made from 5% banana and 95% banana skin. To stay in my routine I might take the pb out of the fridge open it up, put my nose near the opening take in a HUGE SNNIIIIFFFF, then close the top and put it away. As far as the honey goes I’m thinking licking the outside of the honey pot for any residue of drops from past use might be allowable.

And I should be prepared as the sun is coming up later and later these days. I know it’s only 10 minutes but when you add in a 5 min walking warm up and essential 5 min cool down walk the minutes can add up, I mean really 20 total minutes is 100% more than just 10 minutes and is 33% of an hour, so something definitely think about planning wise. To get in this type of workout I might have to start in the pre-dawn hours which brings up the potential need for a head lamp for protection, although I’ll most likely be opting to not wear one in the hope a car takes me out to rid me of this misery.